Paul Bowles on Music: Includes the Last Interview With Paul Bowles by Paul Bowles
Author:Paul Bowles [Bowles, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Composers & Musicians, Literary Criticism, General, Music, History & Criticism, Performing Arts, Film & Video
ISBN: 9780520236554
Google: 6kGRggoPSjIC
Amazon: 0520236556
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2003-09-01T22:00:00+00:00
ARTICLES AND REVIEWS
......
1944
In the Theatre
JANUARYâFEBRUARY (1944), MODERN MUSIC
The preopening favorable grapevine and subsequent press raves on Carmen Jones led me to expect a production combining the glamor of the Met, the vocal and prosodic purity of Four Saints, and the acoustical and dramatic punch of a first-rate Broadway musical. This was decidedly not the case the Tuesday evening when I saw the show. Apologists for the piece claim that on the nights when Muriel Smith doesnât appear, the cast is not so cooperative. This may well be true; Miss Smith was taking that evening off, and the show was certainly uninspired.
The principal objection I have to make is that the work is an opera and needs to be performed by voices equipped to sing the music. If the singing is not top-notch, even though everything else is fantastically good, one can scarcely expect a compelling production. And everything else was not fantastically good.
There needed to be a very apparent reason for creating the esthetic disparity which is the inevitable result when a standard work is paraphrased. Incongruities can make perfectly good sense if presented before the public with style, the great justifier. Carmen Jones has practically no style of its own, in the true sense of the word: a conscious manner grown out of organic necessity and which is inescapably the workâs own. The piece fits all too comfortably into the category of regular Broadway entertainment: it has visual elegance, a properly speedy tempo of action (save for the second scene of the first act, which could be cut if it were not for the scene change
[ 143 ]
going on behind the drop), several good lyrics, and one or two rousing dance sequences. But these things do not give it style, do not help explain why Carmen, more than any other piece from the operatic repertory, should have been made over into a work which misses fire in two directions: both as opera and as musical comedy.
The show has a cast which calls for American music and doesnât get it, and conversely it has a score which in spite of the clever verbal transcription into colloquial American still demands voices which can strike and hold its notes. As to the language uttered during the course of the five scenes (this includes song lyrics, dialogue, and recitativo passages), let it be noted that it is not all pure gold. An overall, standard Negro accent was apparently sought, and it was formulated by the use of such familiar and unfortunate devices as the substitution of âdâ for the hard âth,â and the third person singular verb without regard to subject. This makes both speech and song completely stilted, since the protagonists make it quite obvious that they are not used to employing such variations on their language. No attempt should have been made to create picturesque accents, but since a halfhearted one was made, it would have been better to suggest the difference between Carolina and Chicago, in the first and second acts respectively.
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